I can see clearly now

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

One of my favourite feel-good go-to songs when I need an emotional uplift is that classic 70s song by Johnny Nash, “I can see clearly now.” For those of you millennials, Gen Z’s and Alphas who do not know what I’m talking about, here are the lyrics: “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna’ be a bright (bright), bright (bright), sunshiny day”.

I love the lyrics. Here is a person who has known the wet rainy days of life, when the sun is obscured by the dark clouds of pain, misery and loss. When the “hard rain” is pouring down all around, it’s easy to miss the beauty around you, the opportunities open to you. But everything changes when the rain stops. And there is a certainty that the rain will stop no matter how long we may have to endure it. We have arrived at a moment of clarity. Now that the rain is gone, the fog has dissipated, we can finally see the obstacles preventing us from the goals and dreams we have been pursuing without success.

This is what the faithful men and women of the Bible experienced, and the testimony of their faith is what we heard in the second reading taken from the letter to the Hebrews. It is through the piercing vision of faith that they were able to hope beyond hope, to keep on moving despite all the obstacles and setbacks, to persevere in spite of failure, and to reach their goals and beyond. What set them apart from other men and women were their faith in God. They did not rely on their own strengths or resources or human ingenuity. Rather, their motivation was rooted in a deep trust in a God that they believed would always keep His promises, and He did, even going beyond their expectations. Unsurprisingly the story of Abraham whom we call “our father in faith” has a prominent place. Abraham is proposed as a powerful model of Christian faith because his whole life was lived as a pilgrimage. Even when he was in the Promised Land of Canaan, he recognised that this was not his true homeland, but only a sign of it. It points beyond itself – as all signs do.

What would have made them give up their familiar surroundings, the security of family and kin or even their wealth? The answer can be found in the gospel. These heroes of the Old Testament saw a glimpse of what our Lord clearly promises in the gospel: “Sell your possessions and give alms. Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” They were able to give up what most people would prize and treasure because there was something better awaiting them. Heaven is our ultimate destination and true home. Life may be filled with dark dreary and wet days, but the Lord promises that what is to come is only a never ending “bright sunshiny day.” The dark clouds in our life will disappear. This is not just wishful thinking or false optimism. Faith informs us that things can and will work out in the end. This is what the Book of the Apocalypse (21:23) assures us: “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”

Having such a vision of the future does not mean that we should just sit on our hands and do nothing. Our Lord tells us that we should be like faithful servants who are constantly at work while remaining vigilant: “See that you are dressed for action and have your lamps lit. Be like men waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast, ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks.” This sounds like our Lord is imposing a dress code, perhaps the one thing that is most unpopular in any Catholic parish, as I noticed many of you flinch at the mere mention of it. But the reality is that the dress code imposed by the church merely reflects in a sacramental way the proper inner disposition of a disciple. To be “dressed for action” translates to have our “loins girded,” to be dressed for a journey, a new exodus as we follow Christ on the path of discipleship that leads to the cross. You do not have the luxury of dressing down or be in your most comfortable pyjamas. Christian discipleship is a call to action, not a license to loiter on your sofa and wait for others to do the work.

The second metaphor used by the Lord, which is having our lamps lit, makes a perfect segue into the parable of the servants who await their master’s return from a wedding feast. The parable clarifies the meaning of the metaphor. The lamps refer to the constant state of watchfulness and vigilance. No Christian, no disciple of Christ can be caught off guard. I’ve constantly repeated this ad nauseam: there is no sabbatical or ‘day-offs’ for Christians because the Son of Man is already at the wedding feast. When He returns at the unexpected hour, He will introduce the disciples into His banquet, provided that they are awake and ready. As an incentive and motivation for vigilance, the parable promises a reward for the faithful servants: the Master himself will be at their service. But for the steward who has decided to fall asleep on the job and take additional liberties especially in mistreating others, “his master will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know. The master will cut him off and send him to the same fate as the unfaithful.” Don’t feign ignorance. You’ve been warned!

So, if we find ourselves in this present life, unsettled, uncomfortable, sorrowful and suffering, then we have the assurance that this hardship is part of our journey into joy. We are all on our journey, an exodus from the slavery to sin, to the freedom of becoming heirs of the Kingdom. Of course, it is indeed the task of the whole Church, and of every Christian – to make that hope believable, to make the pilgrimage to God sustainable, to bring into the lives of the sorrowful the authentic joy of Christ’s victory over sin and death.

Christians are called to be pilgrims of hope, more so as we are reminded this year being a Jubilee Year with the above theme. We must be in a constant state of departing. We are people “on the Way.” Thus, our every action and existence in the here and now becomes more urgent when we do not lose sight of the fact that God may call us to account at any moment. Every moment, every deed, every decision ceases to be trivial when our lives are lived and shaped directly in and toward the light of eternity. If we forget this immediacy, we end up abusing our stewardship of this earth; and injustice and oppression becomes staple activities.

Our gospel tells us that the Son of Man will come when we do not expect – He will break into history not when it seems to be finished, nor indeed when all seems hopeless, but at a time that makes sense to Him. The rain will stop, the clouds will disperse, the obstacles will be removed, and the sun will shine brightly once more with no fear of night. But when He does come, He expects to find us working for that Kingdom which He alone can bring to completion. So, with our lamps lit, let’s get working, let’s be dressed for action, so that we can indeed face the future, and the present, with courage and joy.

Every night, as we conclude with Compline, the night prayer, we sing this beautiful hymn, Abide with Me, written by H. F. Lyte. What Johnny Nash merely suggested in his popular song is made apparent in the lyrics of the final stanza of Lyte’s hymn:

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

Without God, all is vanity

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Vanity seems to be a vice that is not only confined to women but also equally plagues men. Coiffed hair, manicured nails, shiny smooth complexions that scream of repeated facials, and a wardrobe that could put Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection to shame. Vanity in this context means pride but vanity could also mean futility or the pointlessness of our actions and decisions or even life itself. The readings for today address the latter.

People often struggle with these questions, ‘What is life all about?’ ‘What is man’s purpose in this life?’ This is what the Book of Ecclesiastes seeks to address. The book is a philosophical essay attributed to Solomon, the proverbial philosopher king. The author wrote this book from the mistakes he made. He shares his own life’s search. The man had wisdom, riches, horses, armies, and women (that’s an understatement, he had lots of women). Yet, in the end Solomon declared everything to be vanity; in other word, pointless, worthless, meaningless, and purposeless. To pursue vanity is to chase after the wind. Starting with the well-known words, "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity," and repeating them in the last chapter after having taken us through all the vanities of life, the book contains the important lesson he learns from God, in a sort of ‘roundabout’ way. The Book ends by giving us the antidote of vanity: fear of the Lord and the observance of the moral law. The secret to a purposeful life is: Without God, ‘all is vanity’. But with God, nothing is in vain.

In the gospel, we are given two examples of such earthly vanity - the greedy brother and the rich man in a parable told by the Lord. A man in the crowd puts this request to the Lord, “Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance.” The question sounds oddly familiar. I’ve seen how family battles over inheritance have set kith against kin. The law of primogeniture says (Num 27:1-11 Deut 21:15) that the first born gets a double portion. If you had two brothers, you divided the estate three ways and the oldest got two parts. So, guess which son this is. His request suggests that he’s the youngest son. Greed, envy and a sense of entitlement have blinded him to place money above kinship.

Understanding the context of the disgruntled brother sets the stage for the parable. There is a comparison and contrast going on between the two characters in the parable and two characters outside the parable. The rich man in the parable is compared to the unhappy younger brother in real life. Christ in real life acts as judge and arbiter, a role taken by God in the parable. Why is the Lord telling this parable about the rich man who had no greed to a greedy man? The Lord builds up the rich man as a good guy, a content man, someone you can easily identify with and would aspire to become. This guy is just the opposite of the disgruntled and unhappy brother. What do we learn? Both men thought that life consisted in ‘things’, that the end and purpose of their lives were the acquisition of such ‘things.’ Selfishness and self-satisfaction have blinded them to the bonds of fraternity and life’s ultimate purpose.

Both the disgruntled younger brother and the contented rich man, in their pursuit for wealth without realising that they risk losing everything in a single moment, proves the point that ‘all is vanity.’ There is a major reversal in the parable – the man who thinks himself clever is proven foolish; the rich man ends up being poor to God. Notice the poetic justice. The rich man, like the entitled brother and like so many of us, so obsessed in storing up treasures for ourselves in this place, acquiring knowledge, wealth, possessions and a list of achievements, had lost sight of the fact that our ultimate goal is our own salvation – making ourselves ‘rich in the sight of God.’ The rich man is not condemned for his wealth or even his greed. He is condemned for forgetting that the ultimate ‘end’ or purpose of his life is salvation. He had made no preparations for this. He was too busy investing in this world and that is the ultimate vanity.

This parable speaks loudly to our generation; it speaks of the purpose of life and what defines it? Have you been defining life in your career, your house, your stock portfolio, in terms of your achievements, the knowledge you possess, the popularity you’ve gained, or the assumption that you will live much longer? What is going to happen when you lose one or more of those things? What happens when you get laid off? What happens when the stock market crashes? What happens when you get some disease which takes away your physical ability? What happens when your friends leave you? What happens if another pandemic hits again? If you define life according to these things, you will be devastated. If these things have become the ‘end’ and purpose of your lives, the goals you are ultimately pursuing, the treasures you are seeking for, then the diagnosis is terminal – vanity of vanities, all is vanity!

St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the real end for which man is made is to be reunited with the goodness of God through virtuous behaviour as well as the use of reason in order to know and love God above all. In the words of St Augustine, “that is our final good, which is loved for its own sake, and all other things for the sake of it.” St Ignatius Loyola in setting out the First Principle and Foundation in his Spiritual Exercises writes, “The human person is created to praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord, and by doing so, to save his or her soul. All other things on the face of the earth are created for human beings in order to help them pursue the end for which they are created. It follows from this that one must use other created things, in so far as they help towards one's end, and free oneself from them, in so far as they are obstacles to one's end.” Thus, the riches of this life are only potentially good. Their goodness is actualised when they serve the greater good – the glory of God and love of neighbour.

The irony we face is that many people would prefer to love the means rather than the end. Man need not just love bad things in order to be condemned to hell. As the old adage teaches us, “The road to hell is lined with good intentions.” Man can pervert his ultimate end by loving seemingly good things, which seem to bring happiness, and mistake these things for the actual, infinite source of happiness - God. Whenever we choose the lesser goods over the greater Good, whenever we convert the means into the end, whenever our vision is obscured to see beyond what lies immediately before us, then we are in trouble. Everything comes down to the choice: do we choose these things as a means to the end, or do we choose them as a substitute for the end?

Today, the readings challenge us to seek the Source of all Goodness, and not just the goods He dispenses. Desire the God of Miracles, not just hunger for the miracles of God. Long for the giver and not just the gifts. Our thoughts should be on the ultimate prize: Heaven. Things of this earth either lead us to that prize, or they may distract us from that and therefore should be placed in their proper place. When we trudge the road of happy destiny, we must remember that the road is just a means to an end and not the destination itself. Anything else is VANITY!

We dare to say

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

The prayer of Abraham in the first reading stands in contrast to that of our Lord’s in the gospel. If Abraham struggled to find the words to intercede on behalf of the depraved inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and even attempts to haggle and bargain with God in making a deal, our Lord provides us with the blue print of prayer in the gospel. There is no longer any need on our part to haggle with God or broker a deal like an astute lawyer, businessman or politician. God, the party on the other end of the transaction (if you see prayer as transactional), is already disclosing to us all His cards and the key to winning His favour and acquiescence.

Although what we’ve just read and heard is a different and shorter version of the Lord’s Prayer which we pray at every Mass and in our devotions, it doesn’t tamper the radical demands which we make of God. In fact, the prayer has the audacity of making the following demands of God: we demand intimacy and familiarity with God’s person and name that borders on the contemptuous and blasphemous, we demand the coming of the kingdom, we demand the terra-forming of our trouble ridden earth so that it may become more like a trouble free heaven, we demand daily sustenance from on high, we demand that our sins be forgiven, and finally we demand shelter from temptation and deliverance from evil. If the school of hard knocks has taught us anything, it would be this: never make unreasonable demands, don’t expect the impossible. Well, for man all these may seem impossible; but for God, everything’s possible! We shouldn’t, therefore, feel uncomfortable or embarrassed to recite this prayer, as it is the Lord Himself who teaches us to do so!

This point is recognised in the introduction spoken by the priest at every Mass before the community recites in unison the Lord’s Prayer, "At the Saviour's command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say..." The phrase ‘we dare to say’ inherently recognises our insignificance before the Father. We are humbly admitting that it has nothing to do with us, in fact, it admits that it is not even something which we can ever hope to accomplish. The words convey a profound sense of unworthiness; we are in no position to make any claims or demands.

The whole phrase places the Lord’s Prayer in a different light – it is no longer to be seen as a cry of entitlement, a demand made on God to fulfill our petitions and wishes. But rather, it is a prayer of humility by someone truly unworthy to even stand before the august presence of God and yet dare to address Him with the familiar “daddy” and make a series of demands of Him. The catechism tells us that “Our awareness of our status as slaves would make us sink into the ground and our earthly condition would dissolve into dust, if the authority of our Father Himself and the Spirit of his Son had not impelled us to this cry . . . ‘Abba, Father!’ . . . When would a mortal dare call God ‘Father,’ if man’s innermost being were not animated by power from on high?” It is by placing ourselves into the position of a child, calling God our Father, that we open ourselves to the grace by which we approach God with the humble boldness of a little child.

This is how we should approach prayer. It should neither be some arcane magical formula that forces the hand of God nor just a mechanical and superficial repetition of words just to appease Him. Prayer should always be rooted in a father-child relationship where the child trusts that the father will always have his best interest in mind even if he doesn’t always get want he wants. The supplicant who comes before God doesn’t need to approach Him as a lawyer who comes before the judge, hoping to outwit and win an argument with the latter. He already knows that the Supreme Judge will always stand with Him and even stand in His place to take the punishment which he deserves.

There is a Latin maxim that addresses the centrality and priority of prayer in the life, identity and mission of the Church; “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi”, the law of prayer reflects the law of faith which determines the law of life. Too often it is the other way around. Our lifestyle choices force our beliefs to conform to them and thereafter affect the way we pray. But when it comes to us Christians, everything begins with prayer. Our lives must be conformed to prayer and not the other way. How we worship and pray not only reveals and guards what we believe but guides us in how we live our Christian faith and fulfill our Christian mission in the world. As much as we are sometimes taken up with the spontaneity of the praying style of our Protestant brethren, and many of us too are tempted to venture into some innovative and creative explorations on our own, we must always remember that the best prayer, or as St Thomas Aquinas reminds us, the most Perfect Prayer, is still the prayer not formulated by any human poet or creative genius but by Christ, the Son of God Himself. In a way, God provides us the words to speak to Him.

Thus, our ability to pray in this way can only come to us by the grace of God - it is only because our Saviour has commanded it and because we have been formed by divine teaching, that ‘we dare to say.’ There is no arrogant audacity in the tone of our voice or the content of our prayer. We take no credit for this prayer. All glory goes to God and to His Christ, Jesus our Lord. We are not the natural sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father. We have no right to address Him by this familiar name. All our words seem banal and fall empty in the light of the pre-existent Word. But because of Jesus through baptism, I have become an adopted child. The Father is revealed to us by His Son and we can approach Him only through the Son. Because of Jesus, my prayer now derives an amazing and miraculous efficacy. For that reason, we dare to call God “Our Father.” Through this prayer, the unapproachable God becomes approachable. The unknown God is made known. The strange and unfamiliar God becomes familiar and a friend. The prayer unspoken is already answered!

The Gold Standard of Hospitality

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Heaven in popular imagination invokes a brightly lit realm above the clouds, a realm devoid of walls, private spaces or homes, where the heavenly denizens are free to roam and wander at will with no one complaining about another invading their private space. But our Lord’s own description seems far from this: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2) At one level, the Jews who first heard these words would have thought immediately of the Temple. If God was indeed Jesus’ father, the Temple which is God’s House (literally this is what the Hebrew word “Bethel” meant) is the “Father’s house” which our Lord is referring to in this text. The Temple of Jerusalem was indeed made up of several rooms or spaces and the closer you get to the inner sanctum of the Temple, the more groups of people would be excluded. For all purposes, it was not a very welcoming or hospitable house.

So, our Lord’s reference to the “Father’s house” which He was returning to, the house with “many rooms”, the house where He was preparing a place to welcome us, could not possibly be referring to this building. In the year 70 AD, after the siege of Jerusalem, the Temple would be destroyed by the Romans, the Jews would be dispersed to the far corners of the empire, and they would be a homeless and stateless nation as once their ancestors were in Egypt and later in Babylon. For our Lord, the true home which He was preparing, would not just be a place to visit, but one to stay. It would be a “dwelling place.”

This is at the heart of God’s hospitality that we encounter in today’s set of readings. The first reading and the gospel provides us with two stellar examples of hospitality - Abraham and Martha. But there is a twist to the ending of both tales demonstrating that as much as we wish to offer hospitality to others and to God, it is we who are the real beneficiaries of hospitality, especially of God’s.

The first reading is not just a story of Abraham’s hospitality offered to his visitors, but more importantly, it is the hospitality offered by the three visitors, which Christians would later identify as the Most Holy Trinity, to Abraham. Our attention is usually focused on the acts of hospitality which Abraham shows to his guests, but are we correct in doing so? The ending of the story which tells us how the three guests would bless Abraham and his seemingly barren wife, both in their old age, with a child, should be the key that unlocks the secret of this tale.

When Abraham gives his guests water, who really gives the water of life? When Abraham refreshes them by washing their feet, who really makes who clean? And when Abraham offers them bread, who really gives the bread of life? If you can figure out this riddle, you are one step closer to enlightenment. I’ll give you a clue… it isn’t Abraham who is the giver of all gifts. This isn’t a story about ordinary hospitality. And neither is the Gospel reading too. It wasn’t Abraham who was really being hospitable. It was God, God giving Abraham the bread of life and the water of life and the washing of salvation.

We turn our attention to the gospel. In wanting to show hospitality to the Lord, Martha expresses hostility towards her own sister whom she believes is unsympathetic to her hard work in the kitchen. For Martha, the “better part" of hospitality is to make her guest feel welcomed, accepted, and loved. Many of us would agree with her.

But our Lord by pointing to the action of Mary shows us that the “better part” is to sit at His feet and listen to His life-giving Word. The best hospitality we can give to the Lord is to listen to Him, which is another way of saying, to accept His hospitality.

Throughout scriptures, it is God who offers hospitality to us. The two bookends of the Bible speak of God’s hospitality - Eden and the Heavenly Jerusalem, both representative of God’s desire to dwell with us and among us. Everything that comes in-between shows God’s unwavering attempt to draw estranged fallen humanity home - whether it be through the establishment of a family of nations under the patriarchs, the call of the prophets to return to the covenants and finally the sending of His only begotten Son to save mankind.

Rather than assume that we can do something exceedingly great for God like Martha, we should imitate Mary in her docility in humbly accepting the gift of hospitality from Jesus, which is salvation. Our place is at His feet in humble adoration and submission. And unless, we recognise that our place is at His feet instead of arrogantly barking orders to others or even to God in order to get our way, our feeble attempts at hospitality would only result in more hostility. The best thing we can do for God, to please Him, is to accept His hospitality without any conditions. The astounding paradoxical truth is this: we don’t serve God. God serves us. We don’t need to feed God. God feeds us. We don’t need to provide for God. God provides for us. We don’t need to protect God. God heals and holds us in our brokenness. We don’t need to sacrifice to God. God has already sacrificed Himself for us.

Both of these apparently simple but exceedingly profound biblical stories offer a guiding word to Christians who yearn and thirst for hospitality, as we struggle to offer the warmth of hospitality to others. At this and every Eucharist, God invites us to the altar of His perfect sacrifice, to the meal which is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, to have a seat at the table and share in the fellowship of the Most Holy Trinity. It is here where we will be fed, we will be refreshed, and where we are saved. As we nervously approach the altar, fully aware of our unworthiness, we hear the Lord who beckons to us, as how He had gently spoken to Abraham, Mary and Martha: “Come… sit down… and taste. Fret no longer in what you can do but pay attention to what I can do for you. With me you will learn love. With me you will discover life. With me you will find a most welcoming eternal home.” If we have received such astounding hospitality at the hands of God, it should not be difficult for us to share a fraction of that with others. Remember: “You received without charge, give without charge.”

How have we come to salvation?

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Whenever an anecdotal story is shared, it begs the question: “what’s the moral of the story?” Most homilies on the parable of the Good Samaritan would most likely attempt to provide the answer to this question and it would often sound like this: “do good to others, even those who are not your friends.” If it was only that simple, this would be the end of my homily. But the truth is that there is more than meets the eye in this most familiar parable of our Lord.

The context of our Lord telling this parable is that it serves as an answer given to a question posed by a lawyer, not to be confused with modern advocates and solicitors. The lawyer here is also known as a scribe, an academician or scholar, who has devoted his life to studying the Mosaic Law in order to provide a correct interpretation and application of the Law to the daily lives of fellow Jews. The question he poses is not just a valid question but one of utmost importance because it has to do with our ultimate purpose in life: “Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” That is the question that every religion and every philosophy has ever attempted to answer. Though a valid question and one which all of us should want to know the answer, the evangelist tells us that his motives are less than pure. It is said that he asked this question “to disconcert” the Lord. It was a trap. In fact, the lawyer already knows the answer to his question. But knowledge of the answer does not necessarily mean that one is living the answer, which is what the Lord wishes to expose here. He speaks eloquently of love but has no love for our Lord or even his audience. And so our Lord tells him that even though he has answered right by citing the two-fold commandments of love, there is still something missing in his answer: “do this and life is yours.”

Having been found out by the Lord and therefore, humiliated, he continues to try to “justify” himself by nit-picking: “And who is my neighbour?” In other words, the lawyer seeks to corner Jesus by forcing Him to tell who is deserving of our love. The surprising thing about the parable of the Good Samaritan is that it does not really provide a direct answer to the lawyer’s second question of defining one’s neighbour. If Jesus had been asked, “How should we treat our neighbours?” and had responded with this story, perhaps “Be like the Good Samaritan” would be an acceptable interpretation. Such a moralistic interpretation would mean that the “neighbour” in question is not the one who is deserving of our love but the one who demonstrates love. It turns the question completely around. But, the intention of the parable is more than a mere call to display altruistic behaviour to one’s neighbour. It addressed a more vital question: how have we come to salvation?

According to the Fathers of the Church, this parable is as an impressive allegory of the fall and redemption of all mankind – how we came to be saved! This is clearly depicted in a beautiful stained-glass window in the famous 12th-century cathedral in Chartres, France. This window is divided into two parts. At the upper section of the window, we see the story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, at the bottom section of the window, the parable of the Good Samaritan; therefore, the narrative of the creation and fall of man is juxtaposed with that of the Good Samaritan. What does the parable of the Good Samaritan have to do with the Fall of Adam and Eve? Where did this association originate?

The roots of this allegorical interpretation reach deeply into the earliest Christian Tradition. Various Fathers of the Church saw Jesus Himself in the Good Samaritan; and in the man who fell among thieves they saw Adam, a representative of mankind, our very humanity wounded and disoriented on account of its sins. For example, Origen employed the following allegory: Jerusalem represents heaven; Jericho, the world; the robbers, the devil and his minions; the Priest represents the Law, and the Levite the Prophets; the Good Samaritan, Christ; the ass, Christ’s body carrying fallen man to the inn which becomes the Church. Even the Samaritan’s promise to return translates into Christ’s triumphant return at the Parousia.

Understanding this parable allegorically adds an eternal perspective and value to its message. It certainly takes it beyond the cliché ‘moral of the story’: ‘Be a Good Samaritan.’ Before we can become Good Samaritans to help others, we need to remember that we have been saved by the Good Samaritan – the story helps us become aware of where we have come from, how we have fallen into our present state through sin, and how Christ has come to save us, the Sacraments of grace continue to sanctify us and the Church continues to nurture and heal us. In other words, this Christological interpretation shifts the focus from man to God: from ‘justification’, how do we work out our salvation, to sanctification, how does Christ save us and continue to sanctify us. As the old patristic adage affirms: “God became Man so that men may become gods.” It moves us away from the humanistic mode of being saviours of the world to a more humble recognition that we are indeed in need of salvation ourselves - we are that fallen man by the wayside waiting for a Saviour and we have found Him in Christ!

In a rich irony, we move from being identified with the priest and the Levite who were solely concerned over their personal salvation but never perfectly love others “as ourselves,” much less our enemies, to being identified with the traveller in desperate need of salvation. The Lord intends the parable itself to leave us beaten and bloodied, lying in a ditch, like the man in the story. We are the needy, unable to do anything to help ourselves. We are the broken people, beaten up by life, robbed of hope. But then Jesus comes. Unlike the Priest and Levite, He doesn’t avoid us. He crosses the street—from heaven to earth—comes into our mess, gets His hands dirty. At great cost to Himself on the cross, He heals our wounds, covers our nakedness, and loves us with a no-strings-attached love. He carries us personally to the shelter of the Church where we find rest, where our wounds are tended and healed. He brings us to the Father and promises that His “help” is not simply a ‘one-time’ gift—rather, it’s a gift that will forever cover “the charges” we incur and will sustain us until He returns in glory.

So the parable is not just a moralistic tale of what we must do as Christians but the history of salvation in a nutshell - it tells us what Christ has done for us and continues to do for us?

The context puts the Lord’s final exhortation to “go and do the same yourself” in perspective. It puts every work of charity, gesture of kindness, expression of hospitality on our part within the greater picture of the wonderful story of salvation. The great commandment of love isn’t about some altruistic humanistic project – us saving the world. Reaching out to others, especially to those who labour under the heavy load of toil and suffering, is not just an act of goodness. It is a participation in the economy of God’s salvation – God saving the world through us and in spite of us. We can love only because we have been loved. We can only heal because we have been healed and continue to be healed by the Good Samaritan Himself, Jesus Christ. To understand what it means to love, does not mean attempting to be a ‘Good Samaritan.’ To understand what it means to love, we need to gaze upon Jesus Christ, He is the ‘Good Samaritan’ who has laid down His life and atoned for our sins. This is eternal life!

We are prophets of a future not our own

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

There is irony in the mission which our Lord entrusted to His disciples. On the one hand, He does not soften the blow by assuring them that the mission will be easy. In fact, He tells them from the outset that they will be sent into hostile territory where they will inevitably face opposition, sometimes subtle and sometimes explicit: “I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.” The contrast couldn’t be more stark.

Sheep are prey animals, what more when you are a young lamb. Sheep are defenceless. They can’t fight, so they can only flee or huddle together when threatened. Their best chance of survival is to stay close to the larger flock and under the care of a shepherd who serves as their personal bodyguard. Leaving the flock would only mean certain death. And yet, it is our Lord who commands them to leave the safety of His pastoral care and venture out in the wide world on their own. The imagery invokes this frightening prospect – they will be easy prey for predators.

And this is what our Lord promises will precisely happen to us. We are not sent out into a Christian friendly world and we should not live under the illusion that we would be warmly welcomed. It will be a world hostile to our values, indignant to our presence and in clear opposition to what we stand for. Using the image of a wolf or perhaps even a wolf pack in contrast to us hapless lambs is meant to highlight the risks of our adventure.

But instead of equipping ourselves with necessary weapons which would ensure our safety, like a big stick or being armed to the hilt like Rambo, we should go forth unencumbered by things which would provide us with additional security. Our presence in the world should be one of innocence, wishing no offence on anyone and yet treated by others as offensive just by existing. Furthermore, our message should be a simple one: “Peace to this house!” No warning of retaliation to any potential threat like: “If you touch me, you will be obliterated!”

“Peace be to this house!” The Hebrew term sālom', or shalom (or the longer greeting “Shalom eleichem”), is typically translated as "peace" and was used in ancient greetings and farewells as of today, much as the Arabic “Assalamualaikum”. Shalom can mean the opposite of war, but it also refers to completeness, soundness, and welfare; it includes a sense of calm security in circumstances and relationships. In an Israelite context, wishing someone shalom means to say, "May God be with you." For ultimately, such peace could only be attained when one’s will was in total harmony with the will of God, when our thinking is aligned with His.

Our Lord doesn’t stop here. He seems to micromanage the entire adventure of these disciples. They were to take nothing with them–no money, no change of clothes, no itinerary. There is to be an urgency to their mission - no extra time to exchange pleasantries with people on the road. And when they enter a town, they were to accept hospitality from the first person who offered it. They shouldn’t be picky with regard to their accommodation or look around for better housing. But then our Lord adds this practical advice. When they encounter hostility, our Lord instructed them to just leave and shake off the dust from their feet while doing so. When people reject us and our message, He gives us permission to depart with no regrets. This assignment is rather amazing from a modern perspective. Do you know any person who would set out on a trip with no luggage, no money (or credit cards), no schedule, no clear strategy, and no host organisation or family to greet them at their destination? That’s a crazy way to travel, right? Sorry, but in this case, it was the Lord’s way to do missions.

But what is more surprising is the brevity and the simplicity of the message which they were to proclaim: “The kingdom of God is very near to you.” What or who precisely is this Kingdom? In terms of a succinct explanation, no one does it better than Pope Benedict XVI of happy memory who wrote: “the Kingdom is not a thing, it is not a geographical dominion like worldly kingdoms. It is a person; it is He… By the way in which He speaks of the Kingdom of God, Jesus leads men to realise the overwhelming fact that in Him God Himself is present among them, that He is God’s presence.” (Pope Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth, Part 1)

When, the disciples returned to give a report of their successes, our Lord’s answer that He saw Satan fall is an important corrective to their skewed understanding. Satan fell not because of the disciples’ efforts. It was not something which had just happened. The fall of Satan before time was witnessed by our Lord who existed before time. In fact, it is the Lord who caused the fall of Satan and his minions. It is the Lord who has established His own kingdom, whereas we His disciples, are merely invited to share in His victory and the benefits thereof. If Christ had not won the victory, our efforts would be futile. Ultimately, there is no reason to boast of what we’ve done. Rather, should we be given an opportunity to boast, we should boast of what the Lord has done for us. This is precisely what St Paul tells us to do in the second reading: “the only thing I can boast about is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Our mission is best summarised in the beautiful prayer written by Fr Ken Untener and attributed to martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, St Oscar Romero:

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything”.

“This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realising that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Twin Pillars

Solemnity of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Today’s feast is an important one in our Church’s calendar but is not one which gets the attention it deserves because it’s not always that the twenty ninth of June falls on a Sunday. So, don’t be surprised and think this is a new celebration in view of the fact that we have a newly minted Pope. It is a feast of not only one but two Apostles of the Lord, in fact, described in Tradition and in our liturgy as the Princes of the Apostles. St Peter, whose birth name was Simon, is one of the Twelve. St Paul, though not one of the Twelve and not one of the followers of the Lord while He was still on this earth, is also regarded an apostle of the Lord by his own designation in his letters. Some mistakenly believe that Paul also underwent a name change after his conversion, but he actually had two names - Saul was his Jewish name and Paul was his Latin name, since he was a Roman citizen.

Though Saints Peter and Paul were not martyred on the same day, they lived and died as twin giants for one Church and share a feast day, befitting their friendship and their leadership. There is something wonderful in these two holy heavyweights sharing a feast, forever shouldering each other like brothers in their zeal for the Father and acting as twin pillars of the Church. One of the reasons, among many, why they were paired from the earliest centuries of the Church, is not because of their association and encounters recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters, but because they served as a new paradigm for the refounding of the city of Rome, contrasted with another set of siblings - the legendary twin founders of the Eternal City who were said to have been raised by a she-wolf.

According to legend, Romulus and Remus, the former after whom the city of Rome was named, were abandoned at birth and cast into the Tiber River where they were discovered by a she-wolf who nursed them. When they grew up, the twins embarked on a quest to found their own city. Romulus and Remus disagreed about which hill to build their city on. Eventually, Romulus just started digging a ditch around the Palatine Hill and built a wall to mark the boundaries. Remus mocked his brother’s work, and in a fit of anger Romulus killed him and then buried him under the wall which Romulus erected around the city. The story is reminiscent of the first account of fratricide in the Bible; Cain killed his brother Abel. It is also ironic that Rome and her empire were founded on fratricide.

Now contrast this with the re-founding of Rome through the spread of Christianity by Saints Peter and Paul. Although both were unrelated and came from vastly different backgrounds and places of origin, they would find a common home in the city of Rome where both will be martyred. It is more than coincidence that their places of martyrdom and burial would be separated by the ancient wall which had separated the two ancient founders of Rome. St Peter would be martyred and buried within the walls while St Paul would be entombed outside the walls. Two eponymous major basilicas sit above their respective tombs.

Like Romulus and Remus, Peter and Paul too had their disagreements. If anyone had a cause for strife and division, it was these two. They had little in common. Paul was the chief persecutor of the early Christians led by Peter. Even after Paul’s conversion, there were also heightened moments of tension and disagreement between the two, especially on how Gentile converts to Christianity should be treated. In fact, Paul speaks of confronting Peter to his face for backtracking on an earlier decision to welcome these Gentile converts without condition. It took divine action to make these enemies into brothers. Peter and Paul were ultimately bound together in a bond stronger than blood: the love of Christ.

It is in this love that Peter and Paul had the foundation of their relationship. Through Christ, these two men were closer than twins in the womb. Peter and Paul are often depicted together in iconography in a circle, embracing one another in a brotherly hug with expressions of affection, like a pair of twins in the womb of their mother. This orientation is also reflected in the two Roman basilicas built over their tombs. Instead of just facing East, the direction of the rising sun from which the Lord is said to return, the two basilicas face each other across the Tiber - as if perennially yearning to be united in an eternal embrace. In contrast, images of Romulus and Remus, the mythological twins, are usually facing away from each other, as one ended up killing the other.

Peter and Paul remind us that brothers can be born from unlikely sources and that the spiritual bonds of fraternity can be stronger than blood ties. What is stronger than the blood which runs through our veins is the blood shed for us on the cross, a blood which has inspired so many Christians to give up their own life’s blood in knowing that eternal glory awaits them on the other side of the threshold of death. Peter and Paul were united in such a death as this. Early Christian tradition tells us they were imprisoned together for nine months before their martyrdoms on the same day. If the Old Rome was built on fratricide, brother killing brother, the New Rome and her Kingdom were founded on fraternal love, brothers dying for each other.

Today, the effigies of these two great Apostles stand as guardians to the entrances of the major Basilica of St Peter, as stone lions would in front of Chinese temples in the East. If the stone lions were meant to keep evil and inauspicious forces out, our two saints beckon to welcome pilgrims of the world to enter. A pillar must always have a partner, and so Peter and Paul are the twin pillars that hold up the doorway of the Church. So staunch are they that the rest of the faithful must celebrate their feast days together as one. They shared their life for the Faith, and so, to this day, they share it also in the observation of their glorious entrance into life eternal. As we celebrate the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, let us look to their model of fraternal correction and mutual love as we work to spread the gospel message in our own lives.

What's missing in your life?

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit, I came to realise that I had taken many things for granted - a congregation at every Mass. The faithful could also expect a Mass waiting for them at every church and those who lived in urban areas could even pick and choose the time and place based on personal preference and convenience. But all that changed with the pandemic. Even when churches were reopened gradually, attending Mass was a privilege and a luxury because of the radical restriction of numbers and SOPs. I guess for all of us, the suspension of public Masses and closure of churches had helped us see what we had regularly taken for granted. We had received the Eucharist merely out of habit and could only appreciate its irreplaceable value when it was missing from our lives. Perhaps, God allowed this all to happen so that we might reevaluate the way in which we’ve been receiving the Eucharist.

This experience is not without precedent. There have been times throughout history when Christians were prohibited from worship. In the early centuries, attending Mass was not just a dangerous thing but life-threatening, not because there was a raging pandemic that threatened the safety and life of every congregant. Attending Mass could get you killed. In the Year 304, Christians of the northern African region of Abitinae gathered for Mass despite a prohibition on penalty of death. They were arrested and summarily sentenced to death. No one, neither old nor young, was spared. When confronted by the authorities about why they defied the Emperor, they replied, “Sine Dominico non possumus” – “Without Sunday, we cannot live.” Just like one cannot survive without food or oxygen, these Christians understood that they could not live without the Eucharist. They would risk everything, including their personal safety and lives, just to have a taste of the Bread from Heaven.

Can we live without the Eucharist? The pandemic has helped us become aware of how much we take the Eucharist for granted. When we do not eat, we grow weak and become sick. The lack of reception of the Eucharist makes us vulnerable to sin, we literally become spiritually dead. Without the Eucharist, we lose direction in life and we risk losing something far greater - eternal life, our immortal soul’s salvation.

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi was instituted in the 13th century to address this concern. It was a direct result of the private Eucharistic devotion and mystical experiences of a nun, St Juliana of Liège. When Juliana was 16, she had her first vision which recurred subsequently several times during her Eucharistic adoration. Her vision presented the moon in its full splendour, crossed diametrically by a dark stripe. This was not the dark patches that one can see on the moon surface on a clear night. It was something entirely different - unnatural.

The Lord made St Juliana understand the meaning of what had appeared to her. The moon symbolised the life of the Church on earth; the opaque line, on the other hand, represented the absence of a liturgical feast: namely, a feast in which believers would be able to adore the Eucharist so as to increase in faith, to advance in the practice of the virtues and to make reparation for offences to the Most Holy Sacrament. In other words, Juliana was shown what was significantly missing from the liturgical life of the Church.

When Pope Urban, who was personally acquainted to St Juliana, finally declared the Feast of Corpus Christi, he did so not because of any personal favour owed to this nun or because they both hailed from the same locality. Some questioned whether it was even necessary to add another feast since the Institution of the Eucharist is already celebrated on Holy Thursday.

But our Lord in the vision granted to St Juliana explained that: “Holy Thursday is more a day of sorrow than of joy,” since it coincided with Good Friday. Pope Benedict XVI also added that: “The Feast of Corpus Christi is inseparable from Holy Thursday, from the Mass in Caena Domini, in which the Institution of the Eucharist is solemnly celebrated. Whereas on the evening of Holy Thursday we relive the mystery of Christ who offers himself to us in the bread broken and the wine poured out.” But he adds, “on the day of Corpus Christi, this same mystery is proposed for the adoration and meditation of the People of God, and the Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession through the streets of the cities and villages, to show that the Risen Christ walks in our midst and guides us towards the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi allows the faithful to look at Our Eucharistic Lord with a greater sense of appreciation for the Blessed Sacrament and to tell the world: “this is exactly what you are missing in your lives!” That is why this celebration is marked by Eucharistic processions. These processions specifically are a reminder that we are to share the gift of the Eucharist with the world and make a bold proclamation of our belief in the Real Presence. We cannot control how other people react to Jesus but we can control how we respond to indifference, and our response should ultimately be one of charity. Public processions provide us with an opportunity to be a faithful witness to Christ in a world that has become indifferent or in some cases hostile towards Him. We are declaring to the world: “Without Sunday, without the Eucharist, we cannot live!”

In a world so obviously confused about the nature and purpose of human life, where so many sense something deeply missing and struggle to grasp at straw to fill that empty space, the sacred liturgy rightly celebrated is a most effective tool of evangelisation. In the sacred liturgy it is our Lord Himself who speaks to us and whose grace is at work in and through us, perfecting our nature and transforming it so that it might participate in the very life of God Himself. Thus, the Mass brings our Heavenly Lord down to earth but it also takes us up to Heaven. When the Mass is celebrated with reverence, love and devotion it truly becomes the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider beautifully describes the symbiotic relationship between the Church and the Eucharist: “The Eucharist is at the heart of the Church. When the heart is weak, the whole body is weak. So, when the practice around the Eucharist is weak, then the heart and the life of the Church is weak. And when people have no more supernatural vision of God in the Eucharist then they will start the worship of man, and then also doctrine will change to the desire of man.”

So, today, if you sense that there is something missing in your life, look no further - that something is a person: Jesus Christ. He comes to us in the Blessed Sacrament of His Body and Blood, to feed us when we are hungry, to quench our thirst when we are thirsty, to accompany us when we are lonely. He alone can fill the emptiness inside of us with joy, and by so doing, give our lives purpose and meaning.

The Foundation of Truth

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

If someone tells you that they have a simple way to explain the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity, don’t believe him for a second. It’s a scam! If it was so simple, our Lord Himself would have taken every effort to explain the concept exhaustively and leave nothing to chance or speculation. If it was so easy, then the volumes of tomes on the subject would have been unnecessary. Our Lord did not dismiss the complexity of the topic. In fact, He acknowledged at the beginning of today’s passage that He “still (has) many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now.” Our experience of God can resonate with this truth bomb. In all humility, how could the finite claim to fully comprehend the infinite? At the popular level, even among Christians, the Trinity is generally thought of as a hopelessly obscure piece of doctrine at best and a self-contradiction at worst.

Of course, one should not stop with the first line of our Lord’s words in today’s gospel passage. To do so would be to condemn ourselves to perpetual intellectual darkness when it comes to contemplating the mysteries of God, an impenetrable brick wall that prevents us from seeing beyond the “cloud of unknowing.” We will never be able to “know” God, and progress in our relationship with Him because to love Him and serve Him and be with Him in Paradise forever is premised on our knowledge of what He has revealed to us in the first place. We should, therefore, continue to the next line, a line which changes everything with the coming of the Holy Spirit: “But when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come.” It is interesting to note that the Spirit’s role in the complete revelation of God, the Most Holy Trinity, is reflected in our liturgical calendar. The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity falls no earlier than the Sunday following Pentecost Sunday.

What is this “complete truth” which our Lord is referring to? For one, it is objective and eternal. In other words, truth is not a matter of consensus. We don’t fashion truth to suit our opinions or desires. It is common today to speak of “your truth” and “my truth,” and that is instead of looking at objective facts, we often hear people speaking of their “lived experiences,” suggesting that every person’s truth is unique and irreplaceable and therefore, infallible and unchallengeable. The complete Truth of the Lord, however, cannot be something malleable, easily moulded according to our personal agenda, our likes and dislikes. Rather, it is we who must conform to the objective Truths revealed to us by God; and if we are humble and strive to be faithful, then the Holy Spirit will gently lead us and transform us with that Truth, into God’s own likeness.

But the most complete Truth is not like any other objective truth which we can speak of. The self-revelation of God is in fact that “complete truth,” for above the Truth of God, there can never be any other truth, and all truth found in the created world is only a shadow and a reflexion of His Truth. The inner Truth of God is this: that the most original and unconditional love of the Father is matched and answered by the equally absolute reciprocal love of the Son. We can understand and participate inwardly in this mystery of love, if the Spirit, who is both the mutuality and fruit of this eternal love, is made to penetrate us. The Spirit binds us to divine love itself. Indeed, this is what St Paul proclaims to the Romans in the second reading, that “the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us.”

Far from being obscure, the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is the breath-taking Truth that makes sense of all other truths, the Luminous Mystery that illuminates all other mysteries, the dazzling sun that allows us to see all things except itself (and this is not because of darkness but its excess of light). All of human thought and experience point in one way or another to the summit of knowing and loving that we call the Trinity. It is the revelation that makes sense of everything in our experience, everything.

It is an undeniable reality that we who believe in the primacy of the Truth revealed to us by God, are now engaged in a direct confrontation with the greater culture which denies the existence of objective truth, what more the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity that finds no equivalent correspondence in this life. Perhaps, the world continues to reject the revelation of the Trinity, precisely because we have been bad witnesses - our lack of love or care for others, our penchant to be selfish and individualistic, our tendency to pander to the maddening crowd, rather than stand up to defend the Truth. How wonderful it would be if we could just reflect the life of the Most Holy Trinity in our own lives? That would be our most convincing and effective way of evangelising - not just with eloquently profound theological explanations (which are undeniably necessary) but, simply through the way we live our lives.

And so, on this day we affirm once again the truth of the One True God in three persons, co-equal in dignity and substance, we recognise that it is less important to focus on the math of the Trinity and more important to focus on the why. Why would God go to all the trouble of creating the world, creating us, and then sending His Son to save us and His Holy Spirit to guide, inspire and sanctify the Church? We arrive at the same answer as the early disciples. God is love. God is not revealed to “be” love in any other religion in the world other than Christianity because in order for there to be love, there must be a beloved. It is impossible to love in the vacuum and to claim to love “no one.” We need an “Other” to love. From all eternity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have poured themselves out into each other in an infinite act of love, which we, as Christians, are called to experience through faith and the sacraments by which we are lifted up into that very love of God itself (Romans 5:1-5). “God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: ‘Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened His hand’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 293).

Yes, “the key of Love has opened His hand.” It is the love of God - the love of God the Father, the love of God the Son, the love of God the Holy Spirit - that binds us, heals us, and makes us children of God. It is this love which compels us to know Him, not just partially but fully, in order that we may love Him fully, and not just partially, and then serve Him wholeheartedly so that we may share in the eternal life which He has promised us from the very beginning. That is the complete Truth, and nothing less than the complete Truth. That is the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. May His Holy Name be praised!

Inspiration, Education and Freedom

Pentecost Sunday

It’s been 50 days since Easter, 49 days since the passing of Pope Francis and exactly one month since the election of a new Pope, Pope Leo XIV. Yes, I’ve been keeping count. Some can’t contain their exhilaration. Others are a little more cautious, observing a “wait-and-see” attitude. Still others remain disappointed that their preferred candidate wasn’t elected, though mostly hiding their disappointment publicly for fear of retribution or judgment. The question that was being floated before, during and even after the short conclave which elected the new pontiff has been this: what role did the Holy Spirit play in all this? Was it purely politics and human machinations or was this the result of divine intervention, the Holy Spirit at work in the Church?

It is not hard to come to such an assumption because if there is an implicit assumption that the Pope can be infallible (in whatever way that is claimed), then surely the election of the Pope must be equally infallible? It must be stated from the very beginning that we should not conflate the doctrine of infallibility with the election of the pope. The cardinals are not guaranteed infallibility. Furthermore, although secrecy is imposed on the participating cardinals under an oath that could lead to one’s excommunication, it doesn’t take much to assume that the entire conclave was conducted under a highly charged politicised atmosphere where much energy is spent on canvassing, persuading, negotiating, dissembling and organising. Is there even room for the Spirit to work?

On this feast of Pentecost, a feast that is specifically focused on the Holy Spirit, it would be good to understand how the Spirit works within the Church. Back to the question of the Holy Spirit’s role in the election of a pope, Pope Benedict XVI, while still Cardinal Ratzinger (and so cannot technically make any infallible pronouncement at this stage of his life), was asked by the Bavarian television: “Is the Holy Spirit responsible for the election of a pope?” Though not having the character of being infallible, his answer is perhaps the best answer we can have on the issue: “I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope… I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather, like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense—not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined… There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!”

Then, Cardinal Ratzinger, provided us with three important points which apply to an election of a Pope, but I would also like to propose that these same principles can apply to how the Holy Spirit works within the Church in general, outside a conclave tasked with electing a pope. These three principles are control, education and elasticity.

The first principle is “control” or the lack of it. Although the word “inspiration”, used to speak of the source for both sacred Scripture and Tradition, suggests that it is the Holy Spirit who is the author and mover, He does so not in the manner of spirit possessions which the mediums of some non-Christian religions believe in. When the Holy Spirit “inspires” us, He does not take full control of our minds or wills as if we have to abdicate both and lose all consciousness or our freedom.

It is here that we need to make a clear distinction between prayer and magic and not confuse the two. It is all too easy to confuse prayer with magic. Magic is all about control – whether it is controlling our fate or our environment or even the gods. But prayer is not about control—it is the opposite. It is an act of surrender. It requires the surrender of our own will to the will of the Father. Discerning the will of God is not easy. We pray “Thy will be done” several times each day, but it never becomes easier to engage in the effort of discernment—of telling the difference between my will and Thy will.

This leads us to the second principle, which pretty much describes the mission of the Holy Spirit in today’s gospel - educator. Our Lord assures us that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.” The educator offers to teach, show, provide insight and wisdom. But, just as you can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink, so the Holy Spirit offers H imself to the Church—but with preconditions. The first is that one prays. Prayer in practice is much harder than talking about it. It involves the sacrifice of time, the surrender of will, an abandonment of control, and the preferring of the slow, still, small voice. It also involves triangulation with the prayers of others.

Lastly, the answer of Cardinal Ratzinger helps us see that the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Church is often elastic. It is not one where the Holy Spirit is the puppeteer and we are mere puppets in His hands. His direction, guidance and inspiration does not compromise our freedom. He gives us room to grow, to stretch, to discern the path that we must follow for our sanctification. We too must learn to give room to the unexpected, to spontaneity, to the Holy Spirit. Benedict’s notion of elasticity is wise and compelling. It combines the light touch of love with the firm grip of connection.

God will never let us go, never abandon us—but nor will He control us if we choose to wander. Benedict reassures us that God will not allow the Church to be utterly ruined. But He will allow us the scope to spoil it by our own wilfulness if we insist. How else do we explain the existence of some very poor popes who did great damage to the Church? As St Paul reminds us, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. It is the nature of God’s rescue mission that He can take the mess we make and reconfigure it into material for renewal, forgiveness and hope. That’s the “happy fault” sung by the priest during the Easter Proclamation, the Exsultet.

So, we rejoice that the Holy Spirit, the gift of our Lord to the Church, continues to inspire us, educate us and free us. The Holy Spirit will always act with Christ, from Christ, and conform Christians to Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who carries out Christ’s promise to Peter that evil would not prevail against His Church. Not that it could not spoil, corrupt, confuse or disturb. The history of the Church has been marked by many dark episodes when her shepherds and flock have given in to sin, sometimes to the most depraved kind of sin. But history shows that whenever the Church slips into corruption, God raises up saints and renews it afresh by enabling “the Church to grow young, perpetually renews it, and leads it to complete union with its Bridegroom.”

Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love!

Soul Quenching Spirit

Pentecost Vigil

Last week, the indigenous communities of Sabah and Sarawak celebrated their respective harvest festivals. This week the Jews do so with the Festival of Weeks or Pentecost, which is its Greek name. The words of our Lord in today’s gospel were not spoken on Pentecost. In fact, the Feast of Pentecost, which is a harvest festival and one of the great pilgrimage festivals of the Jews, is never once mentioned in any of the gospels. The first time we hear of it in the New Testament is found in the Acts of the Apostles, in the scene which is identified with today - the descent of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.

The words of our Lord in today’s passage is spoken on another Jewish festival - the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. This feast, Sukkoth, is most well-known for the little huts or “booths” (from which the feast derives its name) that the Jewish people would construct and live in throughout the week of the Feast. The feast, like all the other major festivals, was a throwback to the time of the Exodus. It was a celebration of God’s gracious provision for the Israelites in the wilderness before they could even plant or harvest crops. But when they had arrived in the Promised Land, the feast took on an additional significance – it marked the completion of the year’s harvest, for Sukkoth was the last of the three great pilgrimage festivals (the other two being Passover and Pentecost) for the year.

Sukkoth was observed over a week, seven days. On these seven days, the priest will undertake a water drawing ceremony - he would go to the pool of Siloam, fill up golden pitchers with water from the pool and make a grand processional back to the Temple, trumpets would resound, there would be great rejoicing, and singing praises from Scripture like Isaiah 12, “Let us draw water from the wells of salvation,” and along with the singing of Psalms. Thousands and thousands of people from all over Israel would throng the streets of Jerusalem waving palm branches, much like what happened when our Lord entered Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives at the start of Holy Week.

Excitement and jubilation filled the air, as the priest would pour out the water beside the altar. And then they would all fall silent as the priest poured water over the altar. This takes place on the last day of the Feast (described by John as “the last and greatest day of the Festival”), and it’s at the end of all this ceremonial pomp and circumstance that Jesus stood up and shouted, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to me! Let the man come and drink who believes in me.” Can you imagine the shock and utter annoyance of the priestly caste and religious leaders at these words? While all eyes were focused on the golden pitcher of water being poured out over the altar, the Lord Himself is declaring – “Look at me! I am the true source of that water!”

The water poured out by the priest on the altar symbolised the blessings that would come with the future Messiah, and his spiritual life-giving water would stream out over all the earth, just as the water flowed from the rock in the wilderness. Amid this great liturgical ceremony, rich with Biblical allusions and symbolism, the Lord Jesus points people to Himself and says, “the Promised one is here!” The offer of salvation goes out to all people because it’s only through Jesus Christ that your soul’s thirstiness can be quenched. “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” But what exactly is this “water” which the Lord is offering?

Should anyone misunderstand the words of the Lord, St John the Evangelist then segues into giving a definitive interpretation to the nature of that water which flows from the Lord: “He was speaking of the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive; for there was no Spirit as yet because Jesus had not yet been glorified”. He provides this interpretation by citing a quotation from scripture: “From his breast shall flow fountains of living water.” Here’s the problem - there is no exact quotation from the Old Testament which can be found in the Old Testament. There are, however, two references to living, flowing water: Ezekiel 47:1ff and Zechariah 14:8. Both references are speaking of the future temple in the Millennial kingdom and pictures water flowing from the temple. However, neither of these references show that the source of that water comes from “the breast” of the Messiah nor do they point to the Holy Spirit in the way that John does in his gospel.

In Hebrew, the word used to speak of the spirit is “ruah,” which could also translate as wind or breathe. The wind represents the Holy Spirit’s share in the creation of the world (Gen 1:2), and the breath or wind of God represents the Holy Spirit’s participation in the creation of human beings (Gen 2:7). On the day of Pentecost, before the appearance of tongues of fire, there was the sound of a powerful wind which filled the entire room.

But water is also another symbol of the Holy Spirit and this is why when our Lord invites His listeners to come to Him and drink, He is inviting them to partake of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Water cleanses, quenches, refreshes, and gives life. Wherever the rivers flow and rain falls, there is life. Water represents the Holy Spirit’s ability to refresh us, quench our spiritual thirst, cleanse us, and bring forth life wherever He flows. He is the rain of Heaven, and He is the living river that flows from within.

The message which the Spirit inspires us to proclaim is a message of hope. It is a message the world needs especially at this moment. Hope at a time when divisions between peoples are being actively promoted. Hope at this time when our prayers may seem fruitless. Hope at a time when our spiritual lives seem tired and drained. The demands of living, paired with a waning prayer life, can produce a dryness of the soul. In this spiritual desert, you become tired, frustrated, weak, and apathetic. Responsibilities and needs, like the intense heat from the beaming sun, drain you of vitality. Life can sometimes be like a desert, but the Holy Spirit is that ever-flowing living water that quenches the thirst of our souls.

Be assured of this, the Spirit is at work even when we may not see it, when we may be tempted to be discouraged. Tonight, as we begin the celebration of Pentecost, we ask the Holy Spirit to come on us anew as He came on the disciples. To come on us to enable us to be that source of hope for the world, to work in us so we can play our part in bringing creation to its fulfilment, to work in us so that we can share the message that all people are united in Christ, to refresh our dry and withered souls, to work in us so that we can offer people the hope of the new life Christ brings. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.

 

In the One we are one

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year C

Not even an hour had passed after his election as the supreme Roman Pontiff, and when his name was announced from the central loggia of the Basilica of St Peter, both Catholics and non-Catholics began trawling the internet to gather as much background information as possible on this dark horse candidate which no one seems to have predicted or mooted. Despite delving into past social media postings, quotations from recent speeches and homilies, reading perhaps too much into his words and papal attire, Pope Leo XIV remains an enigma. We can only speculate as to the future of his pontificate from what he had said or done in the past, but there should be humility in admitting that the jury is still out as to how he is going to steer the Church, the barque of St Peter. I am in agreement with one commentator that we should just let “Leo be Leo” instead of trying to shape his pontificate in “our image and likeness.”

A clue that can throw light on his fundamental theological and pastoral position is his motto: “in Illo uno unum,” which translates as “in the One we are one.” The phrase is paradoxically both simple and profound. It is taken from Saint Augustine's Exposition on Psalm 127, where the great doctor of the Church explains that “although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.” Being an Augustinian priest before his elevation to the episcopacy, it is natural that this self-styled “son of Augustine” should adopt his motto from the Augustinian tradition.

The Rule of St Augustine to which Augustinians live under and are guided by, is really big about discovering God in community. Augustine believed that shared love of something always generated love of one another. Shared affinity sparks synergy which leads to unity. And that’s the meaning of Pope Leo XIV's motto: “in illo Uno unum” - in the One we are one. We're made one by loving the One. Someone noted: “Fans of the same team like each other. Music lovers normally get along well. And Christians should love Christ passionately enough that it translates into loving each other.” The members of the Church are supposed to get along because of the One we love in common. We all stand and fight under one big banner that flies above us as a standard and identity marker of who we are and what we stand for.

Perhaps, this is a most necessary corrective in an age where the Catholic Church seems threatened by factionalism, where we witness members who are fiercely individualistic and tribalistic, where Catholics most often than not identify themselves with commonly used political labels, whether on the left or the right or in the middle, rather than in the foundation of our common bond as Catholics.

Just in case you think that this is exclusively an Augustinian thing, our Lord reminds us in today’s gospel that this is fundamentally a Christian thing, indeed a most Catholic thing: “May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” We are one because our Lord wills it and because He and the Father (and the Holy Spirit) are one. The Church, the Christian communion, has a fundamentally Trinitarian structure and foundation. And the truth of the Most Holy Trinity, Unity in Diversity, is most evident when expressed in authentic community living.

In today’s Gospel, taken from the High Priestly prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper, our Lord prays for the whole world, asking that the love with which the Father had lavished upon Him might also be ours, and that through us the Father’s love might be evident to the world. That is what He died for. This prayer is not just empty rhetoric. The prayer puts into words the very mission of Jesus, the project of Jesus, that is to bring about the community of humanity in communion with the Most Holy Trinity. “Holy Father, I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me. May they all be one.” The Lord’s death on the cross, the gift of Himself to us, was the embodiment of these intercessions; and His resurrection embodied the Father’s answer to that prayer.

And so, the prayer of our great High Priest, that “all be one,” transcends time and space. This unity is not meant to be sustained by a long history of human endeavour. In fact, just like in the past, human endeavour to preserve unity had often proven inadequate and the weak members of the Body of Christ had been responsible for causing great divisions and injury to the unity intended by Christ. We are not the primary agents of the Church’s unity. No, the bonds of unity among the disciples of Christ must be built on a much stronger and studier foundation. The unity of God’s people can never be fabricated by man. It must be generated by the Spirit of God. True authentic unity in the Church is never achieved by sharing an ideology or personality. Our unity, our communion, can only be found in our love for God. In Him we are one. Christians are drawn to one another because they are drawn to a common centre, Jesus Christ Himself. For that is the source of the power of that unity. As long as we remain separated from Him or His will through wilful sin, as long as we insist on our way of doing things or our opinions are the only correct ones, we will never be able to arrive at that unity.

As we await Pentecost and the return of the Holy Spirit, let us as members of the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, call upon the Bridegroom to come, for we wish to be united with Him and through Him, with each other. At the Mass of the Initiation of his Petrine Ministry, Pope Leo XIV made an impassioned call to unity, but it is a unity not built on sharing one ideology or another, but on Christ. Let us continue to pray for him and the Church whom he leads as we heed his words: “Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome His word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to His offer of love and become His one family: in the one Christ, we are one.”